Performance benchmarks

Test setup and performance

Here’s a full list of the notebooks we’re looking at:

Aftershock APEX-15

Razer Blade (2018)

Aftershock PRIME-15

The Razer Blade was chosen to show how the APEX-15 and its GeForce GTX 1060 6GB stacks up against the GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. Similarly, the PRIME-15 was thrown in the mix to see how it compares against a notebook with a 7th-generation Intel CPU.

PCMark 10 Extended

PCMark 10 Extended assesses the performance of systems in a variety of workloads, including basic computing tasks, productivity applications, digital content creation, and gaming. Compared to PCMark 8, it also adds in new test metrics, such as app startup times, which quantifies how long it takes to launch a variety of real-world apps, and a rendering and visualization workload to simulate professional graphics and engineering applications. In addition, existing workloads have been updated to reflect modern usage.

The Aftershock APEX-15 held up quite well against the two notebooks equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. Overall, it was approximately 8 per cent behind the Razer Blade.

A look at the score breakdown shows that much of that difference can be accounted for by the APEX-15’s comparatively weaker gaming performance. The notebooks ended up trading blows in the other benchmarks, with the APEX-15 even coming ahead in the Essentials benchmark, which comprises tasks such as web browsing, video conferencing, and measurements of app start-up times.

All else being equal, the difference in graphics cards probably isn’t going to matter that much in non-gaming related tasks.

3DMark

3DMark is a more relevant assessment of gaming performance, and it puts the system through a range of graphics and computational performance tests at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K.

The performance difference was more obvious here, and the APEX-15 was around 29 per cent slower than the Razer Blade in the Fire Strike test. However, for a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB equipped notebook, it fares reasonably as expected, as can be seen in this older gaming notebook shootout where we've more GeForce GTX 1060 GPU based laptops tested.

VRMark

Futuremark’s VRMark benchmark is designed to assess a PC’s ability to handle high-performance headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. If a PC passes the Orange Room test, it is ready for the latter two systems. The benchmark also has a target frame rate of 109FPS, and I've included the average FPS each notebook managed to provide a clearer measure of their respective performance.

The APEX-15 passed the Orange Room test with little trouble, but it was still 10 percent behind the Razer Blade’s GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. That said, both notebooks with the Intel 8th-generation processor still fell behind the Aftershock PRIME-15 and its Intel Core i7-7700HQ chip.

The way things look, VRMark still places a greater emphasis on higher single-core clock speeds and isn't quite able to fully utilize hexa-core Core i7-8750H. The latter has a 2.2GHz base clock and maximum turbo frequency of 4.1GHz, compared to the 2.8GHz base clock and 3.8GHz boost clock of the Core i7-7700HQ.

While the 8th-generation Coffee Lake processor has a higher turbo boost frequency, it seems like that couldn't make up for the considerably lower base clock.

Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity is a demanding real-time strategy game that puts thousands of units on screen, and it’s capable of pushing even the most powerful GPUs.

The APEX-15 didn’t come that far behind the Razer Blade, trailing it by roughly 7 percent at High settings, where the CPU is the limiting factor. However, the gap widened when the GPU became the limiting factor at Crazy settings, where the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB lagged by around 22 percent. Thankfully, the performance numbers are still reasonably adequate to run the game at those settings.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Mankind Divided is one of the most demanding titles to run today, but the good news is that the APEX-15 still managed to deliver a relatively playable experience at High settings.

That said, the GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q in the Razer Blade was still a good 31 percent faster than the APEX-15. It maintained that lead at Ultra settings, coming away with a 34 percent advantage.

Tom Clancy’s The Division

The Division isn’t as demanding to run as Ashes of the Singularity or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but its Snowdrop engine can still stress cards with the use of dynamic lighting and the like.

At High settings, the Razer Blade was around 32 percent faster than the APEX-15. Still, it’s worth noting that the APEX-15’s 65.9FPS is still a very respectable showing and is a playable result. All told, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB will run most games at 1080p resolution comfortably, provided you turn some of the eye candy down.